I like poetry, although I don't really actively seek it out. What I love, generally, are really good phrases. Some of those actually can call up images for me, but they're no more defined than anything else--still, I love good imagery in a poem (god knows why)--i.e:

How I love to fly alone in the rainHow I love to see the jellyfish pulsing on the cold borders of the universe

That's a line from Robert Bly that I always liked. I don't get a sharp, crisp image of jellyfish, by any means, but I have a sort of sense of translucent white pulsing near darkness. (The darkness is definitely on the right!) But I don't see it. I couldn't tell you how many tentacles the jellyfish has, or how they fan out or if the top is round or pointy or whether you could see through the membrane at all, or how far back the dark bits go. I just know it's there.

That makes no damn sense at all, I realize, but that's about all I'd have if I were starting a painting--dark, some translucent white. Anything else, I'd have to learn/make up while painting.

Because of this, I like short, crisp poems, like Rumi. One hazy image per customer, no waiting.

Another corollary might be "Can you put faces with names?" 'Cos I've always wondered if my near-total lack of mental pictures is the reason I can't put faces to names to save my life--or even remember faces very well. It usually takes three or four exposures before I can remember someone, unless they've got something really visually distinctive about them I can pin down--god help you if you're non-descript!--and even then, it'll take awhile before I can get the name to go reliably with the face. I'm hopeless at parties. "You're who? We've met before? On several occasions? You once pulled me from a burning building? Really? Cool!"